Jan 17, 20233 min read

How We Turned $100 Into $100K

Our story of how we turned $100 into $100,000 through digital products.

Before we created The Paper Money, we had around 2 to 5 business models we were operating. It was very taxing. We did not have time for breaks or holidays and we sat down to start a digital product-based business. We were also tired of dealing with customs, imports and the ever-changing laws around import duties. We also came from losing money from lost cargo, we were just tired. When people talk about business especially when you are fulfilling physical products, they forget to mention the chaos they go through every single day. That's why we chose digital products. We chose to invest our time into creating educational (non-fiction) self-help ebooks for small business owners starting because we had a rough time growing our business from 4 figures to 5 figures each month. When I say rough, I mean losing your capital rough.

We know how hard it is to start over because you failed and we decided to share these resources with people. This journey on its own has not been easy but my highlight was turning $100 into $100k in less than six weeks. We started by searching our domain after we agreed on the name. We got it on 10th October 2018 and we paid $14.95 for it. The plan was also $19.90. We also paid $5 for a business email we never got to use. That brings us to $34.85. We decided to create a factory list and include all the vendors we have worked with over the years, these were vendors we dealt with personally and decided to share it with our community for $10.99 to $15.99 per list. Each list had around 15 to 30 vendors.

We never had a problem with sharing the info nor did we receive a commision on the orders our students placed. The revenue made from these lists allowed us to reinvest back into the website and business. We also didn't mind paying for ads, website hosting and email marketing because we already had a business prior. So, paying for a domain and the rest didn't seem like a huge sacrifice. We thought of it as going to the movies or having a quick snack. I understand that some people don't have the privilege to spare anything over $50 for an idea. That’s also why we encourage people to always give their business time to grow. Collect email addresses, platforms like Omnisend and Mailchimp are perfect for collecting data before your launch.

The rest of the money which was $65.15 went into paying for ads. Mind you, because of our businesses, we knew that it would be harder to sell digital products in that genre via Facebook ads, so we decided to scout for pages on Instagram with more than 4,000 followers to promote our content. We reviewed their engagement and tweaked our content strategy accordingly. We had a clear strategy; out of the 3 ads we run per page, we would have 2 educational ones and one to promote our freebie. We would give out free business plans to grow our mailing list. Then the $65 gave $1,000, so we reinvested $300 back into

our ads, then gave us $7,000 because instead of targeting one page, we had the same content spread across multiple pages.

Our content was the foundation of our strategy. We didn't expect people to react to our content so positively. It has been 4 years, and this year will be our fifth year, and we are very excited to do more for our community.

I hope this inspires you to create more for your business and give it the TLC needed. It definitely was easier for us to manage the $100 and made sure it gradually grew because we had the experience beforehand. The best advice I can give you as a business owner is, KNOW your money. You need to know what works for you and to get that to point you have to be okay with losing and failing. You can't excel when you don't know what you are doing. It's the storm that makes a good sailor. Please do not get discouraged because I can promise you, my losses were bigger than my wins for a while before I could turn my L's into lessons and lessons into wins. Keep going. Keep working. Keep pushing.

This goes without saying, thank you for rocking with our content. We appreciate every comment, every share, like, and save. We hope to use our platform to highlight more businesses creating their own wave because there is no way we would be around if we didn't take a leap of faith. It's been a while since I wrote to you, it almost feels like a love letter.

Happy New Year!